| DEMOCRATIC. | REPUBLICAN. |
|---|---|
| Honest reform in the Civil Service has been inaugurated and maintained by President Cleveland, and he has brought the public service to the highest standard of efficiency, not only by rule and precept, but by the example of his own untiring and unselfish administration of public affairs. | The men who abandoned the Republican party in 1884 and continue to adhere to the Democratic party have deserted not only the cause of honest government, of sound finance, of freedom and purity of the ballot, but especially have deserted the cause of reform in the civil service. We will not fail to keep our pledges because they have broken theirs or because their candidate has broken his. We therefore repeat our declaration of 1884, to wit: “The reform of the Civil Service, auspiciously begun under the Republican administration should be completed by the further extension of the reform system already established by law to all the grades of the service to which it is applicable. The spirit and purpose of the reform should be observed in all executive appointments, and all laws at variance with the object of existing reform legislation should be repealed, to the end that the dangers to free institutions which lurk in the power of official patronage may be wisely and effectively avoided.” |
Pensions, Etc., 1888.
| DEMOCRATIC. | REPUBLICAN. |
|---|---|
| While carefully guarding the interest to the principles of justice and equity, it has paid out more for pensions and bounties to the soldiers and sailors of the Republic than was ever paid out during an equal period. | The gratitude of the nation to the defenders of the Union cannot be measured by laws. The legislation of Congress should conform to the pledge made by a loyal people, and be so enlarged and extended as to provide against the possibility that any man who honorably wore the Federal uniform shall become an inmate of an almshouse, or dependent upon private charity. In the presence of an overflowing treasury it would be a public scandal to do less for those whose valorous service preserved the Government. We denounce the hostile spirit shown by President Cleveland in his numerous vetoes of measures for pension relief, and the action of the Democratic House of Representatives in refusing even a consideration of general pension legislation. The Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold and silver as money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic Administration in its efforts to demonetize silver. We demand the reduction of letter postage to one cent per ounce. |
Pauper Labor.
| DEMOCRATIC. | REPUBLICAN. |
|---|---|
| The exclusion from our shores of Chinese laborers has been effectually secured under the provision of a treaty, the operation of which has been postponed by the action of a Republican majority in the Senate. | We declare our hostility to the introduction into this country of foreign contract labor, and of Chinese labor, alien to our civilization and our Constitution, and we demand the rigid enforcement of the existing laws against it, and favor such immediate legislation as will exclude such labor from our shores. |
Foreign Policy, 1888.
| DEMOCRATIC. | REPUBLICAN. |
|---|---|
| It has adopted and constantly pursued a firm and prudent foreign policy, preserving peace with all nations, while scrupulously maintaining all the rights and interests of our government and people at home and abroad. | The conduct of foreign affairs by the present administration has been distinguished by its inefficiency and its cowardice. Having withdrawn from the Senate all pending treaties affected by Republican administrations for the removal of foreign burdens and restrictions upon our commerce and for its extension into better markets, it has neither affected nor proposed any others in their stead. Professing adherence to the Monroe doctrine, it has seen with idle complacency the extension of foreign influence in Central America and of foreign trade everywhere among our neighbors. It has refused to charter, sanction, or encourage any American organization for constructing the Nicaragua canal, a work of vital importance to the maintenance of the Monroe doctrine and of our national influence in Central and South America, and necessary for the development of trade with our Pacific territory, with South America and with the islands and further coasts of the Pacific ocean. We arraign the present Democratic administration for its weak and unpatriotic treatment of the fisheries question, and its pusillanimous surrender of the essential privileges to which our fishing vessels are entitled in Canadian ports under the treaty of 1818, the reciprocal maritime legislation of 1830, and the comity of nations, and which Canadian fishing vessels receive in the ports of the United States. We condemn the policy of the present administration and the Democratic majority in Congress toward our fisheries as unfriendly and conspicuously unpatriotic, and as tending to destroy a valuable national industry and an indispensable resource of defence against a foreign enemy. The name of American applies alike to all citizens of the Republic, and imposes upon all alike the same obligation to obedience to the laws. At the same time that citizenship is and must be the panoply and safeguard of him who wears it, and protect him, whether high or low, rich or poor, in all his civil rights. It should and must afford him protection at home and follow and protect him abroad in whatever land he may be on a lawful errand. |
THE FARMERS’ ALLIANCE.
This organization sprang into active political existence in 1890, and it swept Kansas, Nebraska, and the two Dakotas; not, however, without local fusions with the Democrats. It originated in the State of North Carolina, and so rapidly extended to South Carolina that it controlled the Democratic State nominations, and elected a Democratic-Alliance State ticket against one run by the old or Bourbon Democracy. In Georgia it sought control of the Legislature, and acquired it, but was defeated by Gen. Gordon for the United States Senate; not, however, without committals from the latter upon all anti-corporation points. It was defeated in like contests in Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. As yet it has not adopted a National political platform, unless that at Ocala, Fla., can be called National. Here the chief idea was a sub-treasury plan, calling upon the government to establish State agencies for the receipt of farm products, upon which 80 per cent. of their market value was to be advanced, at a cost to the producer of not more than 2 per cent. interest. This plank has since divided the organization, and at this writing (May, 1892) it seems impossible to make the organization a National one, committed to political objects. In the elections of 1891–92 it lost its hold upon all of the Western States, and maintains its spirit only in the Southern States west of the Mississippi river. The party quickly divided itself upon its sub-treasury and free-coinage planks, and lost all opportunity for National promise after its first battle—much of its membership refusing to break old political ties, while others endeavored to limit the organization to social and business purposes.